On Monday I started my grand experiment that is National Novel Writing Month. It’s been a few days, particularly good days, and so I thought I’d take a few minutes to reflect on how it’s going so far (i.e., avoid other work).

You can keep track of my progress here, both the word count (currently at 11,028) and the actual novel. Several people have told me they stopped in to actually read what I was writing, and it both thrills and shocks me. Thrills because I don’t think I expected anyone to do that. And shocks because there’s a freaking lot of words on there. Even sitting down to read one day’s output is 1,700 words (though most days I’m writing a lot more than that), which is a commitment. I can’t believe it’s that good, or even mediocre enough to keep people going, so I’m finding myself incredibly grateful.

So far I’ve been amazed at my ability to keep this thing going. The alarm goes off at 6:15 a.m. and after a quick breakfast and a glance at the day’s news, I’m writing, usually by 6:45 or so (depending on how quickly I respond to the alarm — today it was closer to 7). Most days I quit by 8 and have usually racked up 1,500 words by then. I usually hit it again sometime later in the day, depending on my schedule, usually in the afternoon right after work or the evening and put in another 1,000 words or so.

I can’t believe I’ll keep this rapid pace going. They say the first week is like walking on air, and it has been, but that the second week is when it gets difficult. I’m still waiting for that difficult stage, though I have quite a reserve of words in case it gets tough.

My methods have been curious. I’ve never had a 28-page Word document of solid text. It’s bizarre to see. Each time I finish writing I copy the text into Blogger and update the word count. While I’m really glad I’m blogging the novel–I love the output, the feeling that I’m putting something out there no matter how crappy it is, I’m not at all satisified with the blog format. Blogger makes things easy, which is why I chose to use it (and the default templates are so much cooler than Movable Type, which lets me not worry about the design), but it has little flexibility (at least without resorting to recoding the template). It would be ideal to post the novel in order, starting with chapter one and moving forward. But blogs put the newest stuff at the top, so it’s all out of order to read. Yet another hurtle to actually reading it online, which just proves that novels were meant to be curled up with.

But seeing as it’s more a motivational force than anything, I’ll have to sacrifice reader comfort for now. Though I promise if I do finish I’ll put it in a more manageable form.

What’s especially interesting is the writing itself. I started with a couple characters in mind and a very rough idea of what I wanted to happen. I didn’t plot much more than that. And it’s a good thing I didn’t. My characters keep doing strange things, things I didn’t expect or intend. I guess that’s the way it’s supposed to happen. While I don’t know where the plot is going, I got a hint today that the basic love story I had in mind (I’m writing a love story!? What? When did that happen!? Sadly, I’ve had to admit that’s what I had with a couple characters and a rough idea.) is not what’s going to happen. It still might on some level, but that’s not the main point (if there is a point). It’s kind of fun and scary to see what happens.

My biggest fear is that I’m moving too quickly, that the story will rise and rise and climax before we’re halfway through and I’ll spend the last 25,000 words winding down and down in to a deep, deep sleep. But hopefully that’s just crazy talk. I didn’t introduce my second character until the second day, and that was only a brief encounter. Though yesterday she made a surprise showing at the beginning of a chapter, shocking both my main character and me. While she’s in the story now, we know nothing about her, other than the fact that she’s not exactly who I thought she was. The hard part for me will be figuring out who she is as I go along, keeping far enough ahead of the words I’m typing to know what’s going on, but I don’t want to pause and let the story circle over her until it thinks it knows what’s going on.

What’s also curious is my writing style. The character I’m using demands this weird third person omniscient but semi-limited perspective. I only follow my main character, but I can jump into anybody’s head. It makes it hard to introduce other characters, and creates this interesting didactic storyteller feel. I kind of like it, though it feels weird and unnature compared with other books I read. What’s also weird is the sheer difficulty in describing scenes. What I find most difficult is describing character movement. It all comes out tilting and awkward, not that I’m having trouble writing it beautifully, because I’m not even trying. But I’m having trouble getting the words out at all in any sense that’s understandable. I guess practice makes perfect or something.

Personally this has been a pretty easy week for writing 20% of a novel. I haven’t had to sacrifice a lot to shatter my word count goals and it all feels pretty easy. It’s not helped at all by the fact that I have no deadlines this week at work. Last week was incredibly busy and this week has slowed to a stop. I have things due, but none of them are quite as pressing as they were last week. I seem to work a lot better with that immediate pressure, and without it I tend to wander, to get distracted, to want to do something else. I’ve so far managed not to write my novel during the work day, though some of my late-afternoon sessions are getting close.

Maybe this sounds stupid, but I’m afraid to work on my novel during the day because I’ll literally keep going, maybe cranking out 5,000 words in one day. While that’s a huge output, it just doesn’t seem healthy, mostly for my business and my day to day work, but also productivity in general. I suppose if I had a contract in hand, or even the hopes that I might turn this nano adventure into a contract, I could justify a work day of novel writing. But until then I’m just giving in to a lack of immediate deadlines.

Yesterday I actually pitched a few ideas, hoping to rack up some more assignments and deadlines, which is what I really need to be doing all the time.

Here’s to keeping busy (notice what I’m doing right now). I should probably get to work now. But the early lesson is this whole novel writing thing is that it’s amazing. We’ll see how that changes in week two.

Thanks for listening. Over and out.